


Purple Menace

by sophene



Series: Gotham's Protector Universe [7]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bruce Wayne is Not Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Gen, Killer Croc is a Vigilante, Selina Kyle is a Vigilante
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29443344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophene/pseuds/sophene
Summary: A visitor brings Bruce another child in need of help.Part of the AU where Bruce never became Batman (and Selina became Gotham's protector).
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain
Series: Gotham's Protector Universe [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095662
Comments: 7
Kudos: 77





	Purple Menace

Bruce, Alfred, and the kids were all sitting around the kitchen table having dinner one Saturday night when they heard the reverberating thrum of the doorbell ringing.

“I’ll get it!” Tim said.

He and Bruce started to push their chairs out from under the table at the same time.

“Tim, wait, I can—” Bruce said, but fell silent when Tim, not listening to him, went around the kitchen island and bolted out the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to get it, Master Wayne?” Alfred said. He turned as he directed this question at Bruce, a tiny spoon in his hand. He was using it to feed Damian. 

Bruce shook his head. “We’ll get it, Alfred.”

Alfred went back to feeding Damian and Bruce left the kitchen, heading for the front door. None of the other kids followed him.

Bruce had almost reached the front entryway when he heard Tim call, “Bruce!”

There was a sudden note of urgency in Tim’s voice, so Bruce picked up his speed, emerging into the front hallway as he said, “What is it—?”

Once again Bruce stopped short, because he saw what was the matter right away. Waylon Jones—more readily known as Croc to the people of Gotham—loomed beyond the front door.

Although Bruce had known in an abstract sense how tall the man was, he’d never seen him in real life before. Waylon Jones was so tall that he would have had to duck to get through the doorway. Tim looked miniature sized in his shadow, and Bruce saw his long sharp teeth and felt a moment of panic.

Bruce was so distracted staring at him that for a moment he didn’t notice the bundle tucked under Waylon’s arm. Then the bundle thrashed, and Bruce looked down, surprised to see that it was a person wearing an unusual purple outfit. A girl, Bruce thought. She had long blonde hair and was gagged, but this hadn’t dimmed her spirit. She was glaring up at Waylon’s face ferociously.

“Uh, hello,” Bruce said, looking between the girl and Waylon’s face. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach and he thought, _Not again_.

“Ivy said you have a way with annoying kids,” Waylon said in a deep, growling voice.

Tim scoffed, but Bruce and Waylon ignored him.

“Why don’t you come in?” Bruce said.

“Can’t. Jon and I have to go find Cluemaster,” Waylon said.

“Was gagging her necessary?” Bruce asked.

Waylon nodded and said, “Yes.”

Waylon gently set the girl down on the front stoop. Her arms and feet were bound so she couldn’t run, and when she realized what was happening she thrashed some more and yelled something unintelligible. 

“Well, then it was nice to meet you,” Bruce said.

Waylon didn’t acknowledge this. Instead he turned and walked down the driveway, quickly disappearing around a wooded bend.

Bruce put his hands on his hips and looked down at the girl. Now that Waylon was gone, she was looking back and forth between Tim and Bruce. She was on her stomach and Tim was behind her, so she had to strain quite a bit to be able to see him.

“Tim, untie her legs please,” Bruce said.

Tim did as he was asked and Bruce went to untie the gag. She jerked a little bit when he got too close, but calmed down and let them untie her, her eyebrows creased with suspicion.

As Bruce was untying it there was a shadow in the open doorway. Bruce looked up and saw that Cassandra had followed them out of the kitchen. Her jaw dropped in surprise when she saw the bound girl on the front porch.

“Her hands, please, Cassandra,” Bruce said.

Cassandra did as she was asked, and in short order the purple-clad girl was free. She quickly scrambled to her feet and spit on the ground.

“Gross!” she said, rubbing crease marks on her chin. Then she turned to Bruce and said, “Who are you?”

Bruce got a closer look at her outfit. It had a cape and a hood, and was obviously homemade. It had none of the protective armor that Catwoman's suit had. 

“I’m Bruce Wayne, and this is my ward, Tim. This is my daughter, Cassandra. What is your name?”

The girl put her hands on her hips and stood up straight as she proudly announced, “I’m Spoiler.”

Bruce frowned. She was probably somewhere between Tim and Cassandra’s age, but this was undoubtedly a superhero code name. There was just one problem, however, which was that there were no teenaged capes in Gotham. Bruce knew that some of the metahuman superheroes in other cities had youthful sidekicks, but Catwoman and her associates refused to work with children.

“I see,” Bruce said. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Spoiler. Would you like to come inside?”

The girl made a face and said, “No.”

“We’re having dinner right now,” Bruce said. “Are you hungry?”

“I have to go. I’m in the middle of something very important,” she said.

“Well, you can walk, but it’s miles to get back to the city,” Bruce said, gesturing to the lights of the Gotham skyline sparkling along the horizon.

The girl considered this, eyeing the city in the distance. She had a very expressive face. At last she decided, “I could eat.”

So Spoiler, Bruce, Cassandra, and Tim went back to the kitchen, where Spoiler received a lot of raised eyebrows and wide-eyed looks from the others. Alfred, somehow understanding what was happening without needing to be told, fetched a chair and a plate for her. He had her sit down between Tim and Cassandra, and after Bruce introduced her, Spoiler told the others about Croc dropping her off.

“So you’re a vigilante?” Tim asked her.

“Yes!” Spoiler said. “I’ve been taking martial arts classes at the recreation center by my house. I even got some escrima sticks and I’ve been learning how to fight with them! Croc took them though.”

“Cool,” Jason said, in an offhand way that meant he was trying to hide his curiosity. “I wanted to take martial arts classes, but Bruce said no.”

“That’s not true. I said you could take tai chi, remember?” Bruce said.

Jason rolled his eyes.

“Did your parents sign you up for the martial arts classes, Spoiler?” Bruce asked.

Unfortunately, Spoiler was too savvy to fall for this. She shot Bruce a smug look and said, “I can’t reveal anything about my identity.”

“We can see your face,” Dick said.

“Irrelevant,” Spoiler told him. “There are hundreds of teenage blonde girls in Gotham. None of you will be able to figure out who I am.”

“Are you working with Catwoman?” Bruce asked.

An uncertain look crossed Spoiler’s face, the first one Bruce had seen so far. She said, “No, I work alone.”

“I think Catwoman would have a lot to say if she heard you were fighting crime,” Bruce said.

“Catwoman doesn’t work with teenaged sidekicks,” Tim announced. He was the household’s walking encyclopedia of superhero facts. “The closest Gotham has ever come to having a teen sidekick is Huntress, but people speculate she’s in her late teens to mid-twenties. In Central City the sidekicks are other speedsters, and in Metropolis they have Kryptonians. If you want to be a vigilante now you’d probably have to go to Star City and get Green Arrow to take you on.”

“Do you know how to use a bow?” Duke asked her.

Spoiler was looking back and forth between Duke and Tim.

“I can’t go to Star City. My mission is here, and anyway, I don’t want to work with Catwoman or anyone she’s allied with anymore. I tried to team up with Croc and he brought me here,” Spoiler said.

“Mission?” Bruce asked, intrigued. “What mission?”

Spoiler looked frustrated, and Bruce had a guess she’d admitted something she hadn’t meant to admit.

“Alright…fine,” she said. “If you must know, Cluemaster is my dad. I became a vigilante so I can stop him. But Croc didn’t want my help, even though I told him that I had inside knowledge of what Cluemaster is planning.”

Jason looked unimpressed. “Isn’t Cluemaster that knockoff Riddler who robbed a bank a couple of weeks ago?”

“He isn’t a knockoff Riddler!” Spoiler said. “He leaves clues. Riddler leaves riddles.”

“Riddles are just clues but more complicated,” Duke said.

This set the boys off on a conversation about what Riddler would do when he found out Cluemaster was trying to poach his thing, and making fun of the entire concept of leaving clues in general. Spoiler grew visibly more and more frustrated as they went on. Bruce was about to tell them to knock it off, but as he was watching her, he could see how she rebounded internally, shrugging off the boys’ critiques as she decided they didn’t matter. The boys were still talking about Cluemaster versus Riddler when Spoiler turned to Cassandra, who hadn’t spoken a word so far.

“What’s your name?” Spoiler asked her.

Cassandra didn’t answer right away. She rarely did.

“Cassandra,” she told Spoiler.

“Do you all really live here?” Spoiler asked.

Cassandra nodded.

“With all these boys?” Spoiler said, wrinkling her nose.

“They’re not…so bad,” Cassandra said. “Just loud.”

Spoiler looked back across the table at Bruce for a moment. She said, “I remembered who you are! You’re Bruce Wayne. They’re always talking about you on the news.”

Bruce nodded.

“How come you have so many kids?” Spoiler said, looking around the table at the lot of them.

“I ask myself that question a lot,” Bruce said.

“Jason got here pretty much the same way as you,” Dick said. 

Spoiler looked around those assembled at the table and said, “Which one of you is Jason?”

“Me,” Jason said.

“Is that true?”

Jason nodded. “Poison Ivy brought me.” 

“And you stayed?” she asked.

Jason shrugged. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Spoiler looked back at Cassandra and said, “How did you get here?”

Cassandra considered the question. This was something that was still a mystery to all of them. They knew that she had been running from someone when she found the cave below the house, but she never said who she was running from.

All Cassandra told Spoiler, however, was, “Accident.”

“And you?” Spoiler said. This was directed at Dick.

“Bruce adopted me when I was three,” he said.

“And you two?” Spoiler said, looking between Tim and Duke.

“I’m a foster kid,” Duke said.

“Bruce became my legal guardian a few years ago,” Tim said.

Neither of these were real answers, but this was unsurprising. Tim and Duke’s situations were sore subjects for them.

“What about the baby?” Spoiler said, looking over at Alfred and Damian.

“Damian is my biological son,” Bruce said.

“So everyone here was adopted except for him?”

Jason snorted. “Croc probably brought you here thinking the same thing would happen to you.”

Bruce shot him a look, but Spoiler’s expression became doubtful. She said, “Ha, I don’t think so.”

“What happens to you if your dad goes to jail?” Tim asked.

“Uh, I have a mom. She and my dad divorced years ago,” Spoiler said.

This was a relief. Not that Bruce wouldn’t have opened up his home again to a kid in need, but the Manor was already crowded and he could tell that Spoiler had a lot of energy.

“Does your mother live in Gotham?” Bruce asked her.

Spoiler shrugged. Bruce decided to take this as a yes.

“Does she know where you are right now?”

“No,” Spoiler said.

“Any chance you’re going to tell me who she is?” Bruce asked.

“I don’t think so,” Spoiler said, looking all too pleased with herself as she took a sip from her glass of water.

Bruce exchanged a look with Alfred over Spoiler’s shoulder.

* * *

Spoiler stayed over because they were at an impasse. She wouldn’t tell Bruce what her real name was or where she lived, and Bruce refused to let her wander off by herself, even in a taxi.

“You can’t just hold me hostage here,” she said, hands on her hips. “I’ll find a way to break out.”

“Good luck getting around the alarm,” Bruce said.

He left Spoiler with Cassandra, since they seemed to get along. He also gave Dick thirty dollars and an order to not let Spoiler get out of the house. Then Bruce went to his office to call Commissioner Gordon.

Unfortunately, Spoiler’s dad—Cluemaster—hadn’t yet been apprehended, either by the police or by Croc and Scarecrow. The Commissioner was curious about why Bruce wanted to know, but after a moment of consideration Bruce decided not to tell him about Spoiler. Gordon might insist on coming to pick her up, and if she got picked up her identity would be revealed. It seemed like a delicate situation. Bruce didn’t want to do anything that would give Spoiler’s dad a reason to be angry with her. The best option seemed to be to convince Spoiler to give up crime fighting before she got hurt. So Bruce gave him a vague explanation and told Gordon to have Catwoman contact him if he happened to see her, then he hung up and went back to locate the kids.

When he got back downstairs to the den, Bruce was dismayed to hear that Spoiler was teaching some of the kids to fight.

“This is what my instructor said. If someone is rushing at you and they’re bigger than you, you can use their momentum to get them off balance. Cass, let’s show them the move I just showed you!”

Bruce walked into the den in time to see when Spoiler run at Cassandra. Bruce said, “Spoiler, stop!” but stopped in his tracks when Cassandra, half a foot shorter than Spoiler, slipped under Spoiler’s rushing form and somehow flipped her on her back. There was a crash as Spoiler hit the rug and shouts of alarm from the watching boys.

The rug, fortunately, was very thick. Spoiler was fine. She sat up, rubbing her head and saying, “Ow.”

“Cassandra!” Bruce said.

Cassandra flinched and looked over at him. She looked guiltily between him and Spoiler, who was still on the ground.

“How did you do that?” Tim asked Cassandra.

Spoiler, still groaning, rolled over and got to her feet. Bruce expected her to be mad, but she just went over to Cassandra and grabbed Cassandra’s hands. Beaming, she said, “How did you do that? That was awesome!”

“Can you teach me to do that?” Jason asked Cass.

“No, no,” Bruce said, pointing at Jason and then at Cassandra. He was still reeling from what he’d just seen. He had no idea Cassandra could move like that.

“Can you fight with any weapons?” Spoiler asked Cassandra, ignoring Bruce.

Bruce was reconsidering the taxi idea.

“Girls, no fighting or talking about fighting in the house,” he said.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Spoiler asked.

“I don’t care so long as it’s not fighting. Cassandra, get Spoiler some of your clothes to borrow. She’s spending the night here,” Bruce said.

Cassandra slipped out of the room without a word.

“I can’t stay here! My mom will notice I’m gone,” Spoiler said. “This is basically kidnapping.”

“Tell me who your mother is and how to reach her and you can go home,” Bruce said.

Spoiler crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

* * *

Cassandra was back with the clothes for Spoiler in short order. Cassandra’s pajama pants didn’t fit Spoiler, however, so she had to borrow some sweatpants from Dick instead. Somehow she looked both younger and older out of her purple costume.

When Bruce left her and Cassandra, they were sitting in the den on the couch together watching something called 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days. Bruce got Damian put to bed then retreated to his study to drink a glass of whiskey and stare into the unlit fireplace.

He was still sitting there when he heard the window creak behind him. Catwoman only made sounds when she wanted him to know she was there, and he turned, unsurprised to see her climb through the window.

“Gordon said you wanted to talk to me,” she said.

Bruce was surprised she’d come all the way across Gotham to the Manor. It must’ve been a slow night.

“I did, yes,” he said.

“Something going on?”

Bruce sighed and gave her an abridged summary of the evening’s events. Catwoman smirked when he started telling her about the fight in the den.

“She can’t be that bad,” Catwoman said, smiling.

“It’s not that. She’s just…energetic in a way I’m not used to,” Bruce said.

“Where is she? I need to talk to her,” Catwoman said.

Bruce got up and went out of the study and Catwoman followed him downstairs. Fortunately it was late enough that they didn’t run into any of the other kids. The boys were already in their rooms for the night, but he could hear that the TV was still on as he and Catwoman approached the den.

Cassandra noticed they’d come in first, because Cassandra usually noticed other people first. When she looked over and saw Catwoman, her eyes widened. Spoiler looked half-asleep, her head tipped back on the couch cushion. When Cassandra nudged her, she looked over at Cassandra and said, “What?”

Cassandra nodded at Catwoman and Bruce, and Spoiler looked back at them. Her jaw dropped.

Catwoman put her hands on her hips and said, “Hello Stephanie.”

Spoiler’s eyes flashed between Catwoman and Bruce. She said, “I—who is—?”

Catwoman spoke over her. “Your father is Arthur Brown and your mother is Crystal Brown. Your mother is a nurse. Is that right?”

Spoiler didn’t confirm or deny it, but she looked caught.

“There’s no need to dress up in a costume and run around Gotham fighting crime anymore,” Catwoman said. “Croc and Scarecrow caught your father tonight. He’s in police custody now.”

For a moment Stephanie didn’t say anything.

“You can’t stop me. I don’t care if you don’t—” she started.

“I can tell your mother,” Catwoman said, interrupting her. “What would she say?”

Stephanie fell silent.

“I have to go,” Catwoman said, looking to Bruce. “I trust you can handle this from here.”

She turned and walked out of the room without saying anything else.

When she was gone, Bruce turned to look down at Stephanie.

“What’s your mother’s phone number?” he asked her.

“Are you going to tell her?” Stephanie asked.

“I don’t want to give her a heart attack, so no. I’m just going to introduce myself and let her know that you’re spending the night over here with your friend Cassandra.”

Stephanie didn’t say anything for a while, but Bruce was patient. At last she told Bruce her mother’s phone number, and he left the den, feeling satisfied.

He was only just beyond the door when he heard Stephanie tell Cassandra, “Your dad is mean.”

“He’s not,” was Cassandra’s soft reply.

Bruce breathed out an exhausted sigh and kept walking. On his way back upstairs to his study, he found himself wondering if Cassandra and Stephanie were going to stay friends. Cassandra had social issues according to her teachers, so it should be a good thing that she was bonding with someone…even if that someone was, undoubtedly, kind of a menace.

Bruce shook his head, dismissing the issue from his mind. It was a problem for the future, he decided, and fetched his phone to call Stephanie’s mother.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, readers!


End file.
